Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

Do you remember what we were doing last year at this time?

Sure, we were complaining about the weather.

It didn’t do much good, did it?

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his driveway, thoughts occur to me, such as: I had both hands on the wheel and my shoulders rared back just as Roger Miller sang in his song, “Do-Wacka-Do.” A car passed me as if I were backing up. About 20 minutes later, it passed me again. I figured it had circled the globe in that time.

I was taking a highway out of town when I was stopped by a policeman who made me return it. I turned off the highway and drove down a commercial strip of a city. Auto parts stores had proliferated there. I wondered how they all survived. It seems as if everyone has a newer car than I do. A report by an auto industry analyst found the average age of light vehicles on U.S. roads was 12.1 years. We grow tired of automobiles before they wear out. Replacement parts keep older cars passing me.

A surprise gift

I was dealing with an eyebrow that had become a curb feeler or something seen in one of those creepy movies shown at the local drive-in movie theater, the long-closed Passion Pit, when my wife happened upon a forgotten Christmas gift. I knew it would happen. It happens each year. We’d purchased the gift early and my wife had put it away in a good place where we wouldn’t forget about it. Maybe it was forgotten so the finding would flabbergast. Someone received a late Christmas gift of underwear.

My mother was a marvelous cook and prepared meals consisting of massive amounts of many varieties of food. At holidays, after we’d become more stuffed than any turkey, my mother announced that she’d forgotten to put out the carrots. That dish had hidden cleverly in a corner of the kitchen. She’d pass it around. There weren’t many takers. We’d already had pie and whipped cream.

I tend to ramble

Work took me to Texas. I thought of my father-in-law as I visited the Iwo Jima Monument & Museum in Harlingen, Texas. A full-sized model of the Iwo Jima Memorial is found there. My father-in-law, Gene Nelson, was a Marine at Iwo Jima. I miss him.

A friend I’ve often birded with in Texas got a bad diagnosis. I’ve had a couple of those (I only remember one), but his was much worse. I didn’t blame anyone when I heard mine. I just wanted to step out of the way. I thought the doctor must have been talking to someone behind me. Life became a dance with unfamiliar steps. I wanted that day to become an Etch A Sketch. A day I could draw upon and then shake to erase. I’m good. I hope my friend will be, too. I wish my buddy with the bad news all available mercies.

Nature notes

The snow squeaked underfoot. That happens when temperatures fall below 14 degrees, give or take a smidgen. One of the beauties of the cold is the possibility of seeing sundogs, also called mock suns, phantom suns or solar parhelia gracing the sky. Parhelia is a Greek word meaning “beside the sun.” Sundogs form as sunlight is bent (refracted) by ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. In medieval times, the bright lights were interpreted as a sign of the trinity and of great fortune. When I was a boy, a neighbor, upon seeing sundogs, declared, “Tonight will be clear as a bell and cold as hell.”

I watched a Cooper’s hawk chase a starling across the road. Fast food took on a different meaning.

Roadside birds were apparent on a blustery winter day. Small flying things fascinate me. These were beguiling birds come to roadsides to feed on days with cold winds that stung my flesh. Tiny birds in the forms of dark-eyed juncos and American tree sparrows. Lapland longspurs that insisted in moving across the road in front of cars as if they were feathered squirrels. Horned larks moved from the road into the fields when a car neared. Snow buntings moved away from the road, but often seemed intent on racing vehicles. Snow buntings nest farther north than any other land bird.

It was a perfect day — naturally. I could be accused of being quixotic, when I take the time to notice nature, wherever I look, there is something beautiful looking back at me.

Meeting adjourned

Be kind to the people near you.